The Beatles "Now And Then" Single released November 2nd. Remixed 'Red' and 'Blue' Albums due out November 10. (1 Viewer)

[BobO'Link]

So, a question...

Why was it so important to separate Lennon's vocals from the piano?

Would the song have worked simply by taking his original recording of him singing at the piano and adding the rest of the modern instrumentals and voices?

The only thing I can think of is that the song would not have worked as well with the piano constantly being present in the recording.

You can hear it on the wayback machine (Internet Archive). It's included in the "John Lennon - Home Demos 1975-1980 (Vol 1)" and also includes the bridge McCartney cut.

 

[Carlo_M]

It's interesting to read the range of opinions of the quality of the song, in comparison to their catalog and greatest hits.

The truth is: The Beatles released their best songs. Over the decades dozens (hundreds? thousands?) of bootlegs and "secret recordings" have come out, many recorded while the Fab Four were still The Fab Four, and some recorded afterward. None (or maybe I should say very few of them, as I won't pretend to have heard every bootleg) approach the quality of their greatest songs. Maybe an exception here or there, and most of those belonged to George because I think he often got the short-shrift from John and Paul (it was a little heartbreaking to hear him working on things on the Get Back documentary which clearly became great solo releases from him, but have it dismissed fairly quickly by the other two).

So while I was excited to hear of a new Beatles song being released, I had zero expectation that it would somehow rival A Day in the Life, Strawberry Fields Forever, Hey Jude, While my Guitar Gently Weeps, etc.

I approached this from the standpoint of: we have 2 Beatles left, Father Time is undefeated, and this is the last chance we have where all four of them worked on parts of the song. I wasn't going to blindly elevate it into the upper echelon of Beatles songs just because it's all four of them playing on it. But I also wasn't expecting some great, buried masterpiece. It was going to be a Beatles song and that's what I got. A solid new entry into their catalog, and I was alive for it. I wasn't born until well after they'd ended their run, and fittingly one of my earliest childhood memories was the news of John's murder. My father was a Beatles fan and I remember it hit him hard when he talked about it at the dinner table and we saw it covered on the evening news.

To answer Ron's question (which is addressed in the documentary): prior to being able to separate John's voice via AI, if they wanted more of John's voice in the mix, the piano had to be raised along with it as it was recorded together. Since this is a full band mix, chances are they wanted the piano's prominence in the mix to be more in line with other main instruments, while the vocal level needed to be raised in order to be clearly heard.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

To answer Ron's question (which is addressed in the documentary): prior to being able to separate John's voice via AI, if they wanted more of John's voice in the mix, the piano had to be raised along with it as it was recorded together. Since this is a full band mix, chances are they wanted the piano's prominence in the mix to be more in line with other main instruments, while the vocal level needed to be raised in order to be clearly heard.

Carlo, thank you for that. I have not had a minute to sit and watch the documentary so this answers my question.

Have heard the song many times more since my initial post and I like it more with each listen.

 

[Carlo_M]

No worries Ron, I only referenced the doc so you didn't think I was just pulling it out of my...from thin air

On a separate note, I do home music recording (obviously nowhere near the quality of The Beatles) and what they said makes total sense. I've had old takes of guitar parts where I played the part pretty well, but since I record at home in an urban environment and don't have the ability to fully soundproof, sometimes loud ambient noises from outside have snuck in and rendered the take unusable. Now with Logic Pro/Pro Tools/etc. we have tech to address just that little bit, but from older tapes I'd made say 20 years ago, that wasn't possible. And even more so for tech from the 60s and 70s. I was extremely curious how, when I saw John had recorded it onto cassette (ugh) how good they could make it sound. I was pleasantly surprised (but I guess when you have Beatles and Lord of the Rings money you can do amazing things haha).

 

[Carlo_M]

Some additional thoughts. It was often reported, and the Get Back documentary proves, that songs and ideas were heavily shared, workshopped, changed, etc. and in just about every instance the final product of that collaboration superseded the original idea. I know the Get Back doc is long, but it's amazing to watch a germ of an idea, a riff, a chorus, a chord progression, eventually grow to become something awe-inspiring.

Well anything released post John's death, which has his involvement, is robbed of that process. What the remaining Beatles have to work with is set in stone. It's that one take, that one recording. Sure they can edit/remove parts, but they can't workshop it with John (or George).

Given all of that, they've taken a rough early draft of a song and turned it into a full band song without the benefit of being able to heavily workshop it. For those who have tried to write songs, you know what a herculean task that must have been.

 

[Mikael Soderholm]

Yes -- I will probably do that but I meant an official CD with artwork and packaging. I guess the market for a CD single would be negligible, so I get it. But if they can print several different versions of the vinyl, one CD option would have been nice.

There is a CD single announced, at least in Europe: https://superdeluxeedition.com/news/the-beatles-now-and-then-cd-single-confirmed/

 

[Ronald Epstein]

This was uploaded to TikTok. Not sure where the elements were taken from and how authentic it is, but in my opinion, sounds more like a Beatles song than what was released. In fact, it sounds like something that would have been made at the height of The Beatles' career and would probably have been considered one of their better songs. In other words, I think it would have been a wiser choice, if this is authentic, releasing a version closer to this...

Of course, this isn't as intimate/moving as the version that's in general release. So, let's just say this is a nice alternative.

 

[David_B_K]

This was uploaded to TikTok. Not sure where the elements were taken from and how authentic it is, but in my opinion, sounds more like a Beatles song than what was released. In fact, it sounds like something that would have been made at the height of The Beatles' career and would probably have been considered one of their better songs. In other words, I think it would have been a wiser choice, if this is authentic, releasing a version closer to this...


View attachment 203261

Of course, this isn't as intimate/moving as the version that's in general release. So, let's just say this is a nice alternative.

Definitely has a 1964-65 vibe. Instrumental choices sound like several Beatles songs of that era, and it even has the "tit-tit-tit" from Girl. Maybe an AI version based on the actual Now & Then recording?

 

[BobO'Link]

This was uploaded to TikTok. Not sure where the elements were taken from and how authentic it is, but in my opinion, sounds more like a Beatles song than what was released. In fact, it sounds like something that would have been made at the height of The Beatles' career and would probably have been considered one of their better songs. In other words, I think it would have been a wiser choice, if this is authentic, releasing a version closer to this...


View attachment 203261

Of course, this isn't as intimate/moving as the version that's in general release. So, let's just say this is a nice alternative.

That version *does* sound more like The Beatles than the slow one. Yet... it's still "off" a bit. It's also missing the bridge that McCartney chose to leave out (which has somewhat sketchy, missing, lyrics). I don't miss those "Wall of Sound" strings one bit on this one (and, IMHO, they're distracting and unnecessary on the official release).

 

[Tim Gerdes]

In fact, it sounds like something that would have been made at the height of The Beatles' career and would probably have been considered one of their better songs. In other words, I think it would have been a wiser choice, if this is authentic, releasing a version closer to this...

To each their own, but that sounds like the musical equivalent of fan fiction. As a lifelong Beatles fan I've always been amused by the notion that the Beatles had a singular "sound," and I'm glad they chose simply not to mimic their earlier work. The Beatles, and pop music as a result, evolved significantly from Please Please Me to Abbey Road, and I rather like that this track, while containing performances from all four members of the band, represents who they were in the late 70s when John recorded the demo, the 90s when they reunited for Anthology and today.

For my money, this IS the Beatles, and sounds both exactly like them, and nothing like them, just as Sgt. Pepper or the White Album did when they were first released. As a fan born in 1971, it is the most wondrous gift to hear new music from musicians that mean the world to me.

Personally, while I love the Anthology era tracks, the technology has advanced so much, this recording illustrates the poor quality of the source materials for "Free As a Bird" and "Real Love." It has me fantasizing about remixes from Giles Martin, using Peter Jackson's tech. And on that point I do think Martin's instincts rather resemble his father's and I think he is much more suited to producing the Beatles than Jeff Lynne was.

The Beatles remain four of the greatest artists in human history and I am deliriously happy to have this beautiful new track in their catalog.

To quote Liam Gallagher when he was asked about the new track, and whether he was worried he might dislike it, "The Beatles could shit in my handbag and I’d still hide my polo mints in there."

 

[SuperClark]

2023 remix version.One of my favorites I always loved the guitar riff I can play it,And the vocals are outstanding.The 'stereo' She loves you is ok just for fun they did as well as they could.All the new remixes are there now.

 

[Wayne_j]

I got the updated red and blue albums last night from hdtracks and listened to the entire red album. Everything is outstanding except for She Loves You which just sounds a lot lower fidelity than everything else.

 

[Carlo_M]

I'm downloading the high-res versions off of Apple Music for the Red and Blue albums and will give them a listen. I'm a huge Beatlemaniac so I'm a big "UK versions of albums and singles" guy and "prefer mono [most of the time] to stereo mixes, especially pre-White Album". I have all the 2014 mono reissued vinyl as well as the previous mono CD set which apparently I could resell for a lot more than I paid for it back in the day. But they aren't leaving my side.

Despite all this I'm not an uber purist...maybe just a semi purist. For new surround/Atmos mixes, as long as the living Beatles and Giles are involved, I'm down for experimentation. I have the 5.1 and/or Atmos reissues of Sgt. Peppers, White Album, Abbey Road, Revolver. Love the sound of those mixes.

For remixes of stereo mixes of early albums and singles (where instruments and vocals are hard panned left/right) I'm totally supportive of creating new mixes with more nuanced panning choices. However that's proven difficult in the past to do on an individual instrument level as each individual track often had multiple instruments or vocals on them due to the technology limitations at the time. So you could "un-hard-pan" a track but it may have a guitar and bass on it, but the alteration would have to affect all instruments on that track in the same manner. The Peter Jackson AI tech sounds like it has allowed them to isolate just the guitar and just the bass in that example, and give them the flexibility to make different pan choices for each. For example, bass guitar is usually, but not always, centered more or less in modern mixes. So they could center the bass guitar but still pan the guitar to a certain degree left or right.

But a hope I have is that they perfect the use of the technology to be able to isolate the instruments and vocals in the mono mixes for The White Album and earlier. The mono mixes are the only ones where most if not all of the Beatles and George Martin were in the studio making final mix choices (later albums would see them get more involved in the stereo mixes). Also, different takes were sometimes used for the stereo mixes. And just like with everything, they took very detailed mix notes. I am not sure if there would be any sonic benefit to them being able to separate the instruments and then re-create the mono mixes, but with today's technology hopefully preserving a little more fidelity of each instrument (versus the resulting sonic loss inherent when mixing down using the equipment of the 1960s). Maybe, maybe not, but I hope someone in Abbey Road is experimenting and checking out the results. If there is a sonic benefit, for any future mono reissue, I'd want the mix notes to be carefully followed, and the period-correct takes to be used. But if the 2014 mono reissue is the best we'll get, then it's not a bad consolation prize.

As some here know, I work at a large university and employ a lot of students. For those who display an interest, I occasionally have opt-in get-togethers at my place for team building, camaraderie, and organized around shared interests. Recently had a few of them over and played some mono Beatles albums for them (playback chain: Pro-Ject Debut Carbon DC with Hana EL cartridge > Schiit Mani phono amp > Denon 3800 (pre/pro) > Buckeye Class D Purifi Amp > Ascend Acoustics ELX speakers) and they were floored by the sound quality. Unfortunately I think I contributed to the driving up of vinyl prices because I created some new vinyl consumers that evening.

 

[BobO'Link]

I listened to "Red" this morning using speakers. Overall, I like the new stereo remixes and feel they're a vast improvement over the original US "stereo" mixes (I prefer the UK mono on all of those) with the sound stage in a pretty standard balance. The bass sounds centered with the guitars panned left/right depending on who's playing. Main vocals are generally "centered" with harmonies off to the side(s) a bit. I heard little runs/riffs in some of the songs that I don't recall hearing before (or likely did but they were pretty buried in the mix). They sound pretty good and the additional tracks sound like they belong - in spite of me knowing and hearing the "next" song before it starts.

I plan to listen to it again later with headphones. That'll be the true test of how "good" they did with the new stereo mixes.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

I don't want to go through buying Cds anymore. How much does it cost to download the Red and Blue albums digitally?

And are they significantly better than the last MONO and STEREO CD sets from the 2000s? I own both.

 

[RMajidi]

Giles Martin: The Man Behind The Beatles' "Now And Then" Album​

 

[RMajidi]

In case you’re unfamiliar with this…

My Old Friend Backstory - Carl Perkins with Paul McCartney​

“The rest of the story as told by Carl Perkins in a 1996 interview with Goldmine magazine which ran in the 1998 Beatles edition: "She (Linda) said, "There's two people in the world that know what John Lennon said to Paul, the last thing he said to him. Me and Paul are the only two that know that, but now there's three...you know it. I said, "Girl, you're freaking me out!...She said the last words that John Lennon said to Paul in the hallway of the Dakota building were...he patted him on the shoulder, and said, "Think about me every now and then, old friend."'”

 

[Wayne_j]

I don't want to go through buying Cds anymore. How much does it cost to download the Red and Blue albums digitally?

And are they significantly better than the last MONO and STEREO CD sets from the 2000s? I own both.

From HD Tracks I got them for $35.18 each after using their discount code of 20FABHD. I find them significantly better then the 2009 sets.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

From HD Tracks I got them for $35.18 each after using their discount code of 20FABHD. I find them significantly better then the 2009 sets.

Thanks, Wayne. I'll probably use the coupon and download and add these to my collection.

 

[BobO'Link]

The stereo remixes on "Red" sound wonderful with headphones. "She Loves You" is the worst track with a somewhat muddy sound compared to the rest of the songs. I'm hearing things I don't remember hearing before (and quite possibly because I'm listening for differences). Ringo's drumming really sounds good on these. "And I Love Her" (one of my all-time favorites) is absolutely stunning in its new stereo mix. Even "Yesterday" is improved and just silky smooth with the separation on the strings. It all sounds just a bit brighter than the original mixes and the more recent remixes.

The *only* complaint I have is they removed the "007 Stinger" type open from "Help!", but I've had that complaint about this set since it first appeared on CD. It was on the US vinyl release of "Red" but, AFAIK, has never been on any CD release of the set. At least it's still on the CD of the latest US mono/stereo release of "Help!" so... I get why they did it but I've always liked it.

At this point I can safely say that these new stereo mixes are now my go to stereo versions of these tracks. It's almost like hearing them again for the first time.

I'm impressed. They need to start applying this technique to the early mono recordings and get them out with "deluxe stereo" versions ASAP. By "Deluxe" I mean the albums remastered in mono, using MAL, with a 2nd disc, or just repeated on the same disc, of the MAL enhanced stereo versions.

I don't want to go through buying Cds anymore. How much does it cost to download the Red and Blue albums digitally?

And are they significantly better than the last MONO and STEREO CD sets from the 2000s? I own both.

I'd say that the tracks on "Red" are absolutely an improvement over the mono releases and the previous stereo mixes. The new track list is an improvement over the original "Red" release and I like the tracks being added chronologically rather than tacked on the end, actually another disc, like with the LPs.

I've not yet listened to "Blue" as all those tracks were released in the US in "proper" stereo already with most having received recent remastering (that you already have it you've purchased any of the respective album remixes). Like with "Red" the new track list is an improvement. The official The Beatles site says "6 new remixes" which look to be "I Am the Walrus," "The Fool on the Hill," "Magical Mystery Tour," "Revolution," Hey Bulldog," and "Old Brown Shoe" with all the rest being from their recent respective album remix. It's not made clear if those new mixes on "Blue" are were created using the same technique used on "Red" to create new stereo mixes from the respective mono tracks but other sources indicate they were. FWIW I've read "I Am the Walrus" is a bit of a disappointment.

"Blue" also contains the new single "Now and Then" as the album closer which, IMHO, doesn't belong on this set. If anywhere, it belongs on a remastered Anthology 3 release, where it was originally intended to be, or on a "single" with its current "B" side of the MAL enhanced "Love Me Do." I know that when I rip my CD copy to FLAC I'll omit "Now and Then" from the collection and create a "Single" with it and "Love Me Do" for my files.

As good as these are, I won't be dumping any of my original mix *or* older/recent remix versions of any album, mono or stereo. All have merit and belong in my collection.